Work on my book-in-progress has been slowed by other commitments, such as work on Queensland privatisation (hopefully this will get me in the right frame of mind for the privatisation chapter), but I’m still moving forward. Here’s a section on the GFC and the failure of the micro-foundations approach to macroeconomics. As always, comments much appreciated

Updated: Following some criticisms by the Queensland Treasurer, I’ve updated the estimates to exclude gains made by the Port of Brisbane on the sale of its shareholding in Brisbane Airport. Obviously, there are other adjustments that ought to be made to get a proper comparison between the interest savings from privatisation and the income foregone. Treasury has the resources to do this, but instead has chosen to present a totally invalid apples-and-oranges comparison between current year dividends and projected whole of government interest savings

I have a piece in today’s Fin criticising the Bligh government’s case for asset sales. I will probably post it here tomorrow. In the meantime I’ve picked up and confirmed a bit of additional information.
(i) Although the estimated sale price is $15 billion, about $7.5 billion will go to repaying debt held within the Government Business Enterprises themselves. That’s currently being covered out of the revenue of the GBEs, so this debt repayment will make no difference to the fiscal position of the government. The net return to general government is also about $7.5 billion, and it’s only this money that can be used to repay general government debt.[1]
(ii) The estimated interest saving from a AAA rating is $266 million over four years
(iii) The Port of Brisbane and QR[1] produced pretax profits of $553 million in the last reporting year. These state-owned enterprises don’t pay tax to the Commonwealth, but make tax-equivalent payments to the state so it’s pretax income that is relevant.

This provides a simple basis for assessing the short-term fiscal impact of privatisation. The gain from privatisation, assuming the sale took place now, the estimated price is realised, the risk-adjusted interest rate is 6.5 per cent and sale costs are ignored would consist of
(a) interest savings from debt repayment, 6.5 per cent of $7.5 billion or $490 million
(b) savings from the AAA rating, $66 million per year
for a total of $551 million per year

So, the short-term effect of privatisation is roughly neutral. In the long term, it seems likely that returns would grow at least in line with inflation, while interest savings would remain fixed in nominal terms. Hence, privatisation would result in a long-term fiscal loss.

Perhaps there is a case for privatisation that would outweigh these fiscal losses, but, if so, the government hasn’t put it forward.

fn1. The alternative would be to do a whole-of-government comparison, taking account of all debt repayments and using Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) as the comparator.

fn2. Note that this calculation does not include Queensland Motorways or Forestry Queensland. These organisations roughly broke even in the most recent period, but they hold assets that can be expected to grow steadily (and, in the case of forests, literally) in value in future years.

fn3. This excludes a $275 million profit on the sale of shares in Brisbane Airport, but includes other valuation gains, which have been earned consistently in recent years.

This post from TokyoTom deplores the fact that (TT excepted) supporters of the Austrian School, and for that matter libertarians in general, are almost universally committed to delusional views on climate science. The obvious question is why. As TT points out, there are plenty of political opportunities to use climate change to attack subsidies and other existing interventions. And the fact that the environmental movement has shifted (mostly) from profound suspicion of markets to enthusiastic support for market-based policies such as carbon taxes and cap and trade seems like a big win. Most obviously, emissions trading relies on property rights and Austrians are supposed to like property rights.

On the other hand, given the near-universal rejection of mainstream climate science, we can draw one of only three conclusions
(a) Austrians/libertarians are characterized by delusional belief in their own intellectual superiority, to the point where they think they can produce an analysis of complex scientific problems superior to that of actual scientists, in their spare time and with limited or no scientific training in the relevant disciplines, reaching a startling degree of unanimity for self-described “sceptics”
(b) Austrians/libertarians don’t understand their own theory and falsely believe that, if mainstream climate science is right, their own views must be wrong
(c) Austrians/libertarians do understand their own theory and correctly believe that, if mainstream climate science is right, their own views must be wrong

While (a) clearly has some validity, most of the comments on climate science made here by self-described Austrians and libertarians suggest that either (b) or (c) is true. But which?